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Astor Piazzolla:
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"Actually, I wanted to be a concert piano player. I got shocked, though, my first musical depression, when I realized
that this was impossible: my fingers got already "used" to the bandoneon. They were deformed, bent. (...) So I had to accept to play the bandoneon for the rest of my life. That's my destiny."
["Astor" - Diana Piazzolla - Ed. Atlantica]
[Photo: Fondation Astor Piazzolla] |
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<www.piazzolla.org> |
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<www.monsieur-biographie.com> |
 orn in Mar del Plata, Argentina, in 1921, Astor Piazzolla
grew up in New York where he, at the age of 9, began to learn how to play bandoneon. Very soon, he played in various bands and he composed his first tangos. When he
was 13 he had the opportunity to join the orchestra which accompanied Carlos Gardel in the movie "El dia que me quieras". But at this time his musical universe was strongly
influenced by Jazz music, especially by Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway, whom he listened to at the entrance of the famous Cotton Club, because he was still too young to be allowed to get in.
ack in Argentina at the age of 20, he finished his
musical education at the composer Alberto Ginastera in Buenos Aires. 1954, due to a scholarship, he came to Europe where he studied composition from Nadia Boulanger and afterwards conductor from Herman Scherchen.
 n Buenos Aires he founded his first octet in 1955 using
everything he learned from Ginastera and Nadia Boulanger. He used Jazz phrases and - first of all - he made the tango swing. That was something absolute new. Against the protest of the advocates of the traditional
tango he went on and played from now on a modern style of tango, the "tango nuevo", which brought him international reputation.
 he works of Astor Piazzollas was even used in the
modern classical music (Buenos Aires Symphony, 1954 awarded with the Fabian-Sevitzky-Price; Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra, by Rostropovitch 1981) and in vaudeville music. Julien Clerc, Guy Marchand, Marie-Paule
Belle or Georges Moustaki played Piazzolla. He also has composed film music and he performed on Jazz festivals.
 stor Piazzolla died in Buenos Aires in 1992. |
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